US and China go bump in the Middle East

Khody Akhavi / Asia Times | June 30, 2008

WASHINGTON – For China these days it seems that nothing – not rising energy prices; not sanctions aimed at its more unsavory business partners, Myanmar and Sudan; not even the prospect of a nuclear Iran – can curb its thirst for oil.

As China’s energy needs grow at a rate higher than any other country’s, so too have its economic relationships with the oil-producing nations of the Gulf. Like the US more than 60 years ago, China today is seen as a new and commercially refreshing player, happily unsentimental and – crucially – disinterested in the internal affairs of the region.

As Adbulaziz Sager of the Gulf Research Center notes, “The chief advantage of China’s role in the region is its lack of political baggage.”

With the US mired in its “war on terror”, tied up in knots of its own making, needing desperately to extricate itself from Iraq while preserving its eroding influence, China appears poised to challenge US interests in the region.

But if that has Washington worried, it shouldn’t, says Jon B Alterman of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, who has co-authored a new study with John Garver on China’s interests in the region entitled “The Vital Triangle: China, the United States, and the Middle East.”

“The tendency in the US is to see China as a threat or counter to US interests,” he said during a panel on Wednesday, adding that China’s involvement in the region exposes its own national security vulnerability.

“The Chinese lose sleep at night thinking that their energy dependence relies on the Middle East,” he said.

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t

Beijing, which imports half its oil from the Middle East, views political instability in the region as its greatest threat. Often, it is Washington’s policies that precipitate that insecurity, and which Beijing – with no political or military footprint of its own – has been unable to curb.

According to ambassador Chaz Freeman, a career US diplomat and chief interpreter during president Richard Nixon’s path-breaking visit to China in 1972, the Chinese “don’t see themselves as rivaling the US” in the region, yet they are unlikely to “subordinate themselves to us, or underwrite our dominance”.

The status quo presumably makes a strategic relationship between the US and China all the more appealing. While opportunities exist to create a multilateral security framework to reduce tensions and keep the oil flowing, China has been generally reluctant to take on the role of “responsible stakeholder” on the international stage, a term coined by former deputy secretary of state Robert Zoellick.

It is even more cautious in dealing with the issue of immediate concern to the US: Iran’s nuclear program and Beijing’s cordial relations with Tehran.

As Alterman and Garver contend, “China recognizes Iran as a durable and like-minded major regional power with which cooperation has and will serve China’s interest in many areas.”

Iran exports 340,000 barrels of oil per day to China, making it Beijing’s third-largest supplier, behind Angola and Saudi Arabia. China’s investments in Iranian oil infrastructure include a recent deal estimated at US$100 billion to develop the Yadavaran oil field, and the construction of a 386-kilometer oil pipeline running through neighboring Kazakhstan.

From Washington’s perspective, it is Beijing’s technical cooperation on Iran’s civilian nuclear program and China’s continued attempts to deflect pressure on Iran over its nuclear dossier that are most troubling. China’s sale of what Washington considers dual-use chemicals, capable of being diverted to military use, has led the US to sanction some of China’s state-owned companies.

“Nuclear Iran is going to be a game changer in the Middle East,” said Nicholas Burns, former US under secretary of state for policy .

As the Europeans have decreased their economic trade with Iran in response to US-led calls for isolation, Burns said that Beijing has only stepped in to fill the void.

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This article was posted: Monday, June 30, 2008 at 4:03 pm

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